


Michelle Jones Vs. the End of the World

by LeantheBean



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: F/M, Michelle Jones has a brother, What does it look like to live through the end of the world, killing 50 percent of all things is massively destabalizing and actually lleads to mass death, the snap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 19:24:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20917301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeantheBean/pseuds/LeantheBean
Summary: For MJ the beginning, middle, and end of the world happen in an instant, as quick as the blink of her eyes...then the thought, where are Ned and Peter?





	Michelle Jones Vs. the End of the World

When fifty percent of all life vanishes, it creates a void. There’s no escaping the repercussions of it. While some ecosystems rebound, not all humans are created equal. Governments teeter and collapse, going into states of emergency and breaking down as the linchpin figures of destabilized areas melt away into dust. In an instant the world changes. 

The US survives because it is already fractured, responsibilities split among many different entities. The rest of the world is not so lucky, some regions collapse entirely. It would have been survivable if not for the Geo-political destabilization of Kashmir. 

For a long time after MJ studies it, breaks down the slow, bitter end of the world. When the ones that vanish are the breaks on the crazy train, things fall apart. There is some sort of bright side; when India and Pakistan bomb each other into nuclear wastelands, the rest of the world is too splintered to join in. The earth holds onto hope with its fingernails and Natasha Romanoff yelling in Russian just long enough for everything that was lost to dust return as if they never left.

Ecosystems that rebounded to become flush with life are suddenly taxed by overabundance, new growth and old choke each other out of existence and then return to equilibrium, but not all humans are created equal. People in power find that their worlds have moved on without them. Civil war breaks out across the globe as disenfranchised power screams out about the injustice. Many more die, many more fall. It is The End of the World. 

MJ misses The End of the World. For her it there is only a bus trip to a museum and seeing an alien ship descending from the sky over New York. 

In the moment, she wonders if alien invasions are going to be for New York what hurricanes are for Florida, except that can’t be right because New York also gets hurricanes and that just wouldn’t be fair. The thought pins her in place while her classmates rush toward the windows of the bus to stare. It is why she sees Peter slide his own window open and slip out of it, clinging to the side of the yellow aluminum like gravity is optional. 

MJ’s recollection of the beginning of The End of the World is tempered by a realization. Spiderman. Peter. He’s Spiderman. The words ring through her head like a drumbeat. The bus stops and the students pour out, running for the safety indoors as they scan for more ships in the sky and watch grainy livestreams of Earth’s heroes being taken by the doughnut shaped thing. 

The beginning of The End of the World goes like this. The ship vanishes. The class moves on; they all go to the museum, and while everyone gossips about what just happened—and Spiderman, Iron Man, so brave—MJ finds herself with her hand on Ned’s shoulder as he rewinds the grainy footage over and over again. He’s not surprised that no one can find Peter. He stares at the video with a knowing desperation, and MJ wants to scream at him. How could you not have told me; how could I not have known.

Ned and MJ came from the same scholarship program, joining Midtown together in middle school. She’s known him since elementary, and would consider him one of her closest friends, if only by proximity. The two have been sitting together for lunch since MJ was six. Even so, she knew as soon as Peter and Ned met at Midtown Middle School that her best friend by proximity had finally found someone to engage with and that life would never be the same. 

She prepared for the lunchtime dumping and wanted to go out with a bang, but when she plopped down at Ned’s table and flipped Peter off Ned hadn’t told her to find somewhere else to sit, or even said anything mean. All he did was grin at Peter and say, “that’s MJ”, and turn back to his food as though it was an explanation. And maybe it was, because that was how things were from then on. 

It still kind of sucked when Peter trusted Ned over her, or when Ned invited Peter to the movies right in front of her and didn’t even glance her way. But when her brother got sick and MJ left chemistry in the middle because it felt like her lungs where collapsing, Ned found her in the girl’s bathroom and delivered her the backpack she left behind with a steaming cup of freshly brewed tea. He let her hyperventilate into his solid shoulder. Then the two of them went out and sat on the front steps of the library building across the street, shoulder to shoulder not saying a single word until Ned texted Peter, and he joined them, babbling away about Star Wars. The two of them had pressed MJ in-between them, anchoring her to the solid concrete. 

A year later would find them in the exact same spot, only it was Peter in the middle heaving desperate ragged breaths. 

MJ has known Ned since he was five. She’s seen him cry, and laugh, and make stupid faces at teachers, and make friends with Peter. She’d thought she’d seen it all, but she knows it’s the beginning of The End of the World when Ned makes a new face. 

It’s not fear, or anger, or disgust. It’s horror, and it will be forever cemented in MJ’s memory. She knows that if she never sees it again it will be too soon. 

MJ and Ned sit on a bench in the museum and watch Peter try his best over and over again, when all of a sudden something is terribly and indescribably wrong. She can hear screaming from somewhere else in the building, and all she can get out is the word “Ned,” as she tries to stand. 

He turns that expression on her then as she dissolves. It is the kind of pain that your mind forbids you from feeling. The last thing that MJ sees is her childhood friend desperately grabbing at her, trying to take all the crumbling tiny bits of her body and hold them in his arms. 

She wakes up moments later on the floor of a museum. There is marble under her and it is freezing. Ned is nowhere to be seen. All around her there is ruckus and commotion. A woman won’t stop screaming. MJ lies on the floor and observes. There are cracks in the ceiling that were not here when she first walked in. Ned is not here. Her body was turning to dust and now she is lying on the cold hard floor. 

MJ knows to the pits of her bones that Ned would never have left her alone on the ground even if she had been turned to dust. He would have gathered her into his arms, every last bit and carried her back home. Ned is loyal that way. 

For MJ the beginning, middle, and end of the world happen in an instant, as quick as the blink of her eyes. She lies on the floor and contemplates. Maybe she should just stay here. Eventually she gets up because someone is digging a toe into her ribs. 

“MJ, you alive?” It’s Flash. Still young and irreverent. He sounds oh so scared. She nods from the floor. She hates Flash, but if she isn’t dead she might as well be alive. She wonders where everyone else on the field trip is. She knows in the pit of her that something horrible has happened. She does not yet know that it is the end of the world, but in the bottom of her stomach, she suspects. The screaming hasn’t stopped.

It irritates MJ that Flash is the one to pull her out of her stupor. Where is Ned to lift her up with soft hands and dumb jokes? Where is Peter with his shitty puns and lame tee-shirts? Where are her boys to hold her as the world ends? 

He’s Spiderman. A voice in her head whispers. You turned to dust, so he probably died because There’s no way she would have turned to dust if Peter was alive. The world ends if Peter dies so this makes sense. She ignores it, fights back the unwanted image of Ned coated in the dust of her standing over Peter’s grave with a fantasy of her own. 

She pictures her boys getting ice cream together, being bromantic as the world burns down. She imagines her boys being just fine and not missing her at all as she and Flash run hand in hand through the fractured New York streets. Flash yanks her away from a screaming woman, hysterically weeping and babbling in Spanish in turns. 

“The school,” he says panting, “We just have to get to the school.” It is here where MJ’s good sense finally makes her stop, makes her yank him to safety behind a dumpster where the conflict in the streets can’t lay eyes on them. As it turns out, people coming back to life is chaotic. 

“We won’t make it.” She snaps at him. “We’re in fucking Brooklyn, we’re not going to be able to get to Queens on foot. Not today.” 

“What do we do then?” He hisses at her. They are still gripping each-other’s hands. Michelle pokes her head out and glances around, scanning for any familiar sign. 

“My brother is a lawyer, his apartment is near here.” She says, feeling something swoop in her chest. “I have the keys in my pocket.” Somehow the keys are still there in her pocket. Somehow her jeans came back with her.

“What if he’s not there” Flash asks. There’s a hysterical quality to his tone of voice that makes MJ nervous. They can’t break down here. Not right now. Once they’re safe they can fall apart, but not until then, whenever safety comes. 

“Then we’ll camp in the stairwell.” She snaps back.

She doesn’t think too hard about it, just grabs Flash by the hand and pulls him with her toward Donny’s place. She doesn’t let herself believe that he might have moved. She doesn’t let herself hope that he stayed either. 

It takes the two of them ten minutes of running to get there. Michelle gets hit in the face by a man booking it in another direction. It throbs with every step she takes, and MJ suspects that she’ll have a fantastic black eye when this is all over. 

Flash trips over a sewer grate when he flinches from a loud crack of gunfire a block away. His ankle snaps out weirdly and he howls when it does, but MJ doesn’t let him stop moving. When either of them falter, the other is there to yank them forward, toward the promise of a safe haven. 

The building’s glass windows are broken, and the Bellhop is gone. Perhaps off to search for some lost friend or love on the New York city streets. MJ doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and she yanks Flash into the elevator. There’s a tension in her spine that grows as she gets closer to her brother’s door, but when her key slides into the doorknob smooth as butter it all melts away. 

When MJ opens the door she is so relieved to see furniture she knows that she lets out a harsh exhale and falls to her knees. Flash pushes past her into the apartment. He only gets three steps before his ankle gives out. Raggedly MJ thinks that she should probably get him an Ice pack for that. Her face throbs sympathetically as she eyes Flash sprawled out on the floor. 

Donny lives on the twelfth floor but even from up here the jubilation, horror, terror, joy, screaming of the New York streets is so loud. It’s fifty percent block party, fifty percent gang war, one hundred percent trauma and disorganization. 

The noise is muffled by the glass window panes, but MJ isn’t sure if that’s because the glass is glazed or because she can’t push past the ringing in her ears. The hysteria that she spurned in Flash seems so inviting. MJ hates having emotions like that though. They become so overwhelming so quickly. 

All MJ can do is press her back into the bolted door behind her and sob into her knees. She wraps her arms around her head so that Flash can’t see her cry. That would be just too humiliating, even for the end of the world. 

She feels a featherlight touch on her arm, the ghost of Flash’s fingers as he tries to be a compassionate person for once. Then the moment is gone. He ducks away pretending that he hasn’t looked, hasn’t seen anything at all, and MJ pulls herself together. He will need help making calls. She takes a deep breath, then another. Something cold is set down on the back of her head. 

It is an ice pack. Flash is doing his best, in the most absurdly Flash way possible. She sits up and presses the freexing square into her face. Flash is awkwardly wrapping another ice pack to his ankle with an ace bandage. 

“Your brother’s first aid situation is stocked.” He offers. MJ nods in response. 

“Yeah he used to box.” Flash humms a little in recognition. MJ leans back against the door for a moment longer, letting the cold of the ice seep into her bones. It lets her focus on something sensory that isn’t the screaming. She breathes in and out, centering herself. They have work to do. 

The cell towers are down for three days as New York riots. The world is rioting, but the historian and journalist MJ will be doesn’t exist to know this yet, and in the moment, MJ can’t see the forest for the trees. New York screams and celebrates and not once does MJ think about the rest of the world. On day three she finally gets through to her weeping Mother on her brother’s apartment phone, everyone is accounted for now that she’s called. Flash gets ahold of his Sister. His father is still MIA. 

Stark drones restore order to the city, and MJ finally makes her way back home. Her mother and father give her a tight group hug, and Donny ruffles her hair. MJ puts up with it without the usual complaint. Of the four of them, only Donny lived through the snap, and there is something hard in his eyes even as he smiles at them. He touches her like she might melt away at the faintest pressure. MJ puts up with it for about fifteen minutes before she tackles him and smacks him in the face with a pillow. Her brother used to be a boxer, so he gets the better of her quick, but it takes effort on his part. The roughhousing makes the tight knot of something behind his eyes start to loosen.

Midtown High becomes a registered checkpoint. Come here, reclaim your identity. MJ checks in and is handed an ID card with her name on it, a little black spot icon in the corner to indicate where she has been for the last five years. 

She sits down on the stairs, her hand white knuckled on the railing as she thinks about it. Five years is so much time. She wonders what happened to Ned. He had seemed so solid in those last moments, pulling her into his arms, she can’t imagine that he faded into dust like she had. 

She stays on the stairs for twenty minutes watching the crowds before she hears a shout. There’s been lots of shouting but this one stands out to her. She knows the sound of Peter anywhere. 

“MJ, there you are! She’s over here Ned.” He says from the landing above her

She twists to look up the stairs. Peter looks fine, as though time hasn’t touched a single bit of him. She knows what happened to him without needing to be told. She is so completely glad that he is alive. Ned on the other hand seems positively haggard. He looks at her and his eyes are haunted. It’s a familiar expression. She bets he didn’t look at Peter like this. 

Peter barrels into her like a juggernaut, lifting her up and spinning her around as though she weighs nothing. MJ buries her face in his neck and inhales. He smells like Peter. It’s a little bit soapy clean, a little bit sweaty boy, a little bit something else underneath it. Something entirely him. She thinks it might be the best thing she’s smelled in her entire life. 

She wraps her arms around him tight, and it hits her all at once that she is furious he died, furious he didn’t let her in on the secret the way he brought in Ned, furious he died without warning her he could; most of all though, MJ is so completely glad that Peter thought to look for her amongst the crowds packed into the school that she would have cried if she hadn’t already drained her well of emotion completely dry. 

She pulls away from him to look at Ned. He’s standing awkwardly behind Peter staring at her. He looks miles away from the boy that used to sit with her and watch other kids play in the sandbox. She starts toward him tentatively and then he lurches into her. If Peter were any less supernatural the two of them would have tumbled down the stairs. Instead Peter plants his hands on her back and steadies the MJ-Ned unit as Ned squeezes the life out of her. 

“You are never allowed to do that again Michelle Jones. Never again. Do you get that?” He half shouts, half sobs into her shoulder. 

She wraps her arms around the girth of him and grips him tight. 

“I won’t Ned, I swear I won’t. Pete won’t let it happen.” The aforementioned Pete steps in closer and wraps his arms around the two of them until they are all engaged in some kind of demented three-way octopus hug. 

Ned laughs wetly into her hair. She wants to tell him that she’ll kill him if he gets snot in her curls, but she can’t muster up the energy. 

“Guys,” Ned snorts, “The world totally ended while you both were on the longest bathroom break ever. Once we’re done hugging I’m going to tell you all about it.” Peter snickers and then presses his face into the space between her shoulder blades. She snakes an arm around him to pull him in tighter. 

MJ pulls her boys tight into her body. The End of the World has come. Nuclear fallout is everywhere. Tony Stark is dead. The dust in the wind is walking. But Michelle Jones grips her boys so tightly she thinks she’ll burst and is utterly convinced that between the three of them they can survive absolutely anything.


End file.
